The British GENES blog (GEnealogy News and EventS): Top stories concerning British Isles ancestral research from Irish born Scottish based professional family historian, author and tutor Chris Paton. Feel free to quote from this blog, but please credit British GENES if you do so. Should you wish to get in touch, contact me at christopherpaton @ tiscali.co.uk. Happy hunting!

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Saturday, 26 May 2012

FamilySearch remoulds British Isles

Remember when FamilySearch (www.familysearch.org) had us in Europe? There we were, happily munching onions, eating escargots, frankfurt and spaghetti, when without so much as a by-your-leave, they came along and kicked us out, achieving what no Tory politician had ever dared to do. A people seemingly without an identity, we strolled merrily on our longboats and car ferries through the North Sea (or is that the German Ocean?!) and thus did we settle to form the British Isles, a happy new category on the website.
But a restless people we must be, for now we have been redesignated once again, this time to a new category, the United Kingdom and Ireland.

Of course, that means Northern Ireland should be well covered!

Think of the fun and games that will ensue if Scotland chooses to go independent in two years time. The SNP may need to think this one through a bit more...! lol :)

7 comments:

FamilySearch is still somewhat geographically challenged. I note that the Channel Islands and the Isle of Man are both included in the new category for the UK and Ireland, but they are both Crown Dependencies, and hence are not part of the UK and have no association with Ireland either!

Great post, Chris - I love the "whatever" tag! I wondered how long the Irish would put up with the way they had been classified by Family Search - the use of "British Isles" is definitely not PC for many people. Now we can have some fun on our side by insisting Family Search rename it "United Kingdom and Republic of Ireland". You have to pity the poor folks in Utah, trying to make sense of all this :-)

Hi Caroline, as Chris said back in "whenever", I, too, am going to have several minor id crises:

From family search I have

THE ONE! I must start with and she is the SPECIAL XX genes from Ulster Northern Ireland;One set Republic of Ireland (Oh Dearie me);two in the UK proper;a few from Germany/Prussia;another set in Jersey BI/CI;one SPECIAL XY mariner escapee to the UK;3 others to Oz all from Denmark;AND 3,000+ XX/XY descendants all down-under in 4 States;

O Bugger it all I'll just have a wee dram! Hang On! and a XY set in Scotland.

As for the poor folk in good 'ole Ootah, I'll bet they designed the whole thing. cheers bogged down, under sonya's kin